


Attired with Stars

by DonnesCafe



Series: Celestial Navigation [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bees, Brothers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Post-Reichenbach, Sussex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 10:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonnesCafe/pseuds/DonnesCafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A different take on Sherlock and John's reunion post-Reichenbach, not compliant with Season 3. Angst, love, bees, the cottage in Sussex. Warning: minor character deaths and references to torture, not explicit and both past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attired with Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This follows directly from [Starry Night](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1261801)
> 
> This one stands alone, but you’ll have a better sense of the background and context if you read that one first.
> 
> Written for the Let's Write Sherlock Challenge 13: Vacation Getaway. Not your typical vacation, but then Sherlock is involved.

She was waiting for him in the Bart’s locker room. John had just finished his late afternoon shift in the A&E. He recognized her at once. Mycroft’s assistant. 

“What the bloody hell does he want?” John stripped off his white coat and threw it at the laundry bin in the corner. 

She didn’t speak, just held out a folded note. He took it. Torn from a small pocket diary of some sort. Not Mycroft’s usual heavy, cream-colored, monogrammed stationary. He had had several of those notes over the years. He opened it. 

_Imperative you come. I would not ask this unless it was vital. Will explain. Mycroft._

He sighed. He was exhausted from his shift and the usual mayhem of heart attacks, knife wounds, and car accidents. Mike Stamford had managed to get him on at Bart’s as soon as he felt he could go back to work. The A&E had been perfect, actually. It usually kept him focused enough so that, for a least a few hours, he didn’t think about Sherlock. 

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what this is about?” She just smiled and shook her head. He changed into his street clothes and followed her out of the building. The usual black car eventually pulled to a stop at the back entrance to the Royal London Hospital. Was Mycroft ill? 

Anthea led him to a private waiting room and closed the door behind him. Mycroft sat alone in the room. His suit coat was off, his shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves rolled up. John noticed a ball of cotton taped to the crook of his arm. 

Mycroft, in turn, noticed him looking at it. “I gave blood. B positive is rather rare. He lost so much blood.” 

John’s world shifted. Resettled. He knew with absolute certainty who the “he” was. 

“You let me think he was dead. You both let me think he was dead. For almost two _years_ , Mycroft.” Suddenly his knees started to give way. Mycroft moved quickly, gripped his arms with strong hands, steadied him. 

“I’m so sorry, John,” Mycroft said softly, still holding on to him. John saw fatigue and pain in the eyes that looked steadily into his. “He insisted. I’ll explain as best I can, later. But do you want to see him first?” Of course he wanted to see him. He had dreamed of seeing him. He had prayed to God, bargained with the ceiling through endless nights, despaired, then prayed again. Just to see him one more time. 

~~~~~  


 _“... entry wounds are generally star-shaped. Extent of skin damage and discoloration depends on the type of bullet…. Full-metal-jacketed bullets usually exit without deformation or fragmentation. An exit wound may vary considerably in size and shape relative to the entry and may be stellate, cruciate, elliptical....”_

The words from the Army manual on combat wounds were still intact in his memory, left there from his training for Afghanistan. They now formed a comforting, clinical barrier between him and the man on the bed. He couldn’t look at the man whole right now. Better just to see the wounds. He didn’t look at the chart at the end of the bed either. He needed to do his own inventory first. 

“Stellate,” he said. “Both entrance and exit. Most likely a rifle. The bullets had to be full-metal-jacketed, otherwise the internal injuries would have resulted in fatality at the scene. Three bullets. Shoulder, rib cage, thigh. AK-47?” 

“Most likely that or perhaps a Dragunov. All the bullets went through, thank God, so we couldn’t do ballistics tests,” said Mycroft 

John carefully replaced the dressing on the exit wound on the front right shoulder. So close to the sub-clavian artery. So close to the position of his own scar. So close. 

He left his fingers on the injured shoulder for a long moment. He still couldn’t look at the face. He had glanced at it once when he entered the room. He couldn’t look at it again right now. 

Instead, he glared at the man across the hospital bed. “How the bloody _hell_ could you let this happen to him, Mycroft? Where has he been all this time?” 

“Trying to dismantle Moriarty’s entire network. I tried to talk him out of the whole ridiculous crusade. Have you ever tried to talk him out of anything, doctor?” 

John grunted, a reluctant, unspoken acknowledgement of the bull-headed, bloody-minded, ego-driven determination that was Sherlock Holmes. 

“I tracked him, supported him, funded him. I did everything he asked. But he simply dropped out of sight in Afghanistan. We couldn’t pick up a trace of him anywhere. Four months later, give or take, a Pakistani colonel contacted me. He told me Sherlock was alive and offered him to me for money. They were holding him in the Central Prison in Dera Ismail Khan. The colonel contacted me yesterday to set the final price, a rather obscene amount, in cash. I got the money together and took an agency jet to Peshawar last night. Two of my agents made the exchange this morning. As they were leaving, they were fired on. We lost Fitzwilliams. Sherlock was wounded, as you see. Kassar managed to get him onto the helicopter and back to Peshawar. I didn’t want to leave him there. I brought him to London. Did I do right to move him?” 

John’s fierce eyes softened at the uncertainty in Mycroft’s voice on that last question. “Yeah, I think so. I wouldn’t have trusted the lobectomy to a hospital there. But he lost a lot of blood. I don’t like his vitals. Did he ever regain consciousness?” 

Mycroft shook his head. 

John finally looked at Sherlock’s face. The cheekbones stood out like a sort of modern sculpture, carved in white marble. The cheeks and eyelids fell away, deeply sunken shadows. The mouth had almost no color. Lines that John had never seen before marked the corners of the eyes and mouth. The long dark hair had been washed and combed, and it fell away from the brow in familiar waves. There were bruises on the brow and what looked like insect bites. Not a sculpture, no. El Greco. Those paintings of saints that he had seen, long ago, at the Tate. That’s what the face looked like; that’s what pain and suffering looked like. 

“What…,” he hesitated, took a deep breath. “What did they do to him, Mycroft?” 

Mycroft moved to the foot of the bed and lifted the sheet. Both ankles had rings of scabbed and abraded flesh going all the way around them, about a three inch strip. Ankle irons. John felt light-headed for a moment. Mycroft put the sheet back down gently. John had already seen the bruises and scabs, some new, some old, between the chest tubes and surgical bandages on chest, stomach, and legs when he had examined the bullet wounds. 

“The rest he will have to tell us himself. The prison at Dara Ishmail Khan has a reputation for torture and starvation.” 

They looked at each other across the still figure on the bed. The only sounds in the room were the beeps of monitors and the hiss of oxygen. 

“Will you find the people who did this and kill them?” John tried hard to keep his voice level. 

“Oh, yes,” said Mycroft. “Each and every one.” 

~~~~~  


Anthea brought dinner into the waiting room for them. They ate in silence. There was chicken in a light lemon sauce with capers and artichokes, rice, and a very good white wine. John couldn’t identify it, but he was sure Mycroft could, down to the vineyard and the year. 

John took another swallow of the wine. “And why didn’t either one of you _bastards_ bother to tell me he was alive?” The “bastards,” while heartfelt, had little actual heat in it. The universe had granted him his fervent wish, and he was having trouble working up any righteous anger in between the joy that Sherlock was alive and the terrible fear that he might not be alive for long. 

“This may take a while,” said Mycroft. 

“Neither of us is going anywhere anytime soon," John replied. 

So Mycroft explained. He explained about Moriarty and the snipers. About Sherlock’s determination to wipe Moriarty’s network from the face of the earth, so that the people he cared about could live in safety. 

John heard him out. He sighed and finally spoke. “For Christ’s sake, Mycroft, why couldn’t he tell me, let me help? I’m used to danger. We worked together." 

“He refused to even consider it. Please believe me when I say that I raised the possibility. But I agreed with him in the end. This was different from your little puzzles, John. I don’t mean that unkindly, truly I don’t. But this was field work of an unusually dangerous kind. As you saw.” They both looked through the open doorway at the unmoving figure on the bed. 

“I’m going to tell you something that is still classified.” John nodded. “Before you knew him, for a while after he left university, Sherlock was MI6. He trained as an operative. He left after an operation went wrong and agents with him were killed. Innocent people died as well. Sherlock has never been good with collateral damage.” 

“And you are?” 

Mycroft shrugged. “I try to recognize cost/benefit ratios. In order to be useful, I have to focus on the long game. Sherlock, on the other hand, tends to get involved and to focus on the particular. The particulars, in that case, led him back to a more serious run at the drugs he had dabbled with at university. That lasted for a considerable time. In any case, once he was clean… relatively clean…. he created another line of work for himself as a small-scale protector of the innocent and dealer in justice.” 

John bristled, and Mycroft saw it. “Oh, do relax, Dr. Watson. You both did good work. I always hoped, however, that he would rejoin the circus. The detecting business seemed a trifle small-scale as an arena for the exercise of his considerable talents. Be that as it may, he was trained for field work. You weren’t. Also, he feared that if he didn’t come back, you would feel in some part responsible. Better a clean break, he thought. I advised him otherwise, but he was insistent.” 

John shook his head. Mycroft raised an eyebrow. 

“I understand it, but I don’t have to like it. I’ve been through hell.” 

“So has he,” said Mycroft. 

~~~~~  


Days and nights blended. He lost count. Once John made it clear that he wasn’t leaving, ever, Mycroft efficiently arranged for an extended leave for him from St. Barts, visited twice a day when he could, and got on with his new avocation of finding and killing those responsible for Sherlock’s present state. 

That state remained coma for an agonizingly long time. Then, in the middle of one night, John woke to Sherlock’s voice. 

“Stars,” said the voice, weak, thready, unmistakeable. “John, I could touch them, they were so close. I wanted to show you. Look, that’s… Deneb.” 

John scrambled out of his chair. Sherlock face was lifted toward the ceiling, one arm raised, a finger pointing. “Look,” he whispered. 

John leaned over him. Sherlock’s eyes were closed, but there was a slight smile on his face. John thanked the God in whom he wasn’t sure he believed. 

He put his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “I’ll look,” he said, “but can you open your eyes? Sherlock? For me?” 

The head turned toward the sound of his voice. The eyes opened, unfocused at first. Then they focused, but they were dull, clouded. “Hurts. John?” Then he closed his eyes and slept again. 

~~~~~ 

“I can’t. Not now. Maybe not ever.” Sherlock looked so fragile that neither Mycroft nor John had the will to press him. Mycroft's agents in the area pieced together some of the facts. Sherlock was captured in Afghanistan by Fahad Jaan, a human trafficker he had tried to take down. Jaan’s men raided the Pashtun village where Sherlock was hiding, captured him, and killed every member of the family who had sheltered him. He had been held in a Taliban compound. How he ended up in a prison in Pakistan was unclear. Whenever they tried to find out more from Sherlock himself, his eyes took on such a haunted look that they let it go. 

His body gradually healed. His mind did not. He would soon be ready to leave the hospital, and John and Mycroft had avoided the discussion of what to do next for several days. It couldn’t be avoided any longer. 

“Psychiatric facility?” Mycroft said, tentatively. “I know that’s not what either of us wants, but he needs help of some sort. He’s going to have to talk to someone.” 

“Can you imagine him chewing up and spitting out therapists? No.” 

“Baker Street?” Mycroft sounded even more tentative. 

“He’s not ready to take up his practice again, if he ever will be. We can’t just pretend like this never happened.” 

“You could ask me.” The voice from the other room was weary but held traces of amusement. 

Damn. John had forgotten what preternatural hearing the man had. He and Mycroft walked into Sherlock’s room. 

“Stars,” he said, not looking at them. “I want to go and stay somewhere where I can look at the stars. John, will you come?” 

“Leave London?” asked John. 

“Yes, leave London. I need a… vacation. Quiet. Somewhere I’ve never been. Dark. Stars.” He was still looking down at his hands. 

A vacation. John never thought he’d hear Sherlock use that word except in the context of crime, such as “the victims of the triple murder were on vacation in Scotland when they were hacked to pieces.” Never in reference to himself. “Of course I’ll come.” 

“I’ll arrange it,” said Mycroft. 

“Thank you, Mycroft.” Those were also words John never thought he’d hear Sherlock say. He finally looked up at them. “I’m sorry I… I’m sorry. I know you’re both worried. It will be alright, I think. But I can’t be in London. Not yet.” 

~~~~~  


Mycroft quickly found them a cottage on the Sussex Downs. It was on the cliffs, situated on several acres, in a part of the Downs away from all but one tiny village. He had researched it and assured Sherlock that it was in a Dark Zone. Good for stargazing, close enough to London that he could visit. 

He provided them with an address, a key, and a Land Rover. The Land Rover was parked at the back of the hospital in a no parking zone beside Mycroft’s grey Jaguar the day Sherlock was discharged from the Royal. Mycroft and John transferred two large hampers from Fortnum & Mason from the Jag. Mycroft was apparently as worried about Sherlock’s nigh-skeletal frame and lack of appetite as was John. Mycroft pulled out a large box of books and handed it to John. He balanced the box on his knee on the back bumper of the Rover and peered curiously at the upturned spines. History, science, thrillers, classics (Dickens, Donne, Thackery, Austen, Kipling). He spotted _Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Apiculture_ as well as _Constellations: a Field Guide to the Night Sky_. 

“Bees?” asked John. Sherlock sat in the front passenger seat, not taking any obvious interest in any of the proceedings. 

“Hmm,” said Mycroft, reaching around him to put the leather duffle bags of clothing Anthea had packed in the back. “There are hives on the property. I thought Sherlock might find the bees interesting.” 

“We’ll see,” said John, dubious. Dead bodies, yes. Ash, yes. Bees, probably not. But then he wouldn’t have guessed about the stars. 

Mycroft took the violin case from the front seat of his car and handed it to John. “I think that’s everything.” He held out his hand. John shook it firmly. 

Still holding Mycroft’s hand, he said, “I’m sorry I was so… stroppy, when I thought he was….” He couldn’t say the word. It had come so close to being true. “I thought you didn’t care.” 

Mycroft smiled at him, a singularly sweet smile that transformed his normally intimidating visage. “I was glad… am glad that you care for him as well. Heaven knows he needs it, even if he prefers to sustain the fiction that he doesn’t. You’ll call me if you need me?” 

John nodded, went around to the driver’s side, and cranked the car. Soon they were on the A23, headed toward Sussex. 

~~~~~  


The cottage was beautiful. Weathered grey brick mottled with lichen, red tile roof, the front door painted sea-blue. They walked down the slope from the front drive to the chalk cliffs by unspoken agreement even before they went inside. Midway from the house to the cliff-edge was a curved brick terrace cut into the slope. A wooden table with two chairs. A long wooden bench faced the water. 

“New construction,” said Sherlock, pointing to the clean, red surfaces of the bricks. 

“For stargazing,” said John. “Mycroft thinks of everything.” 

The late-October air was crisp and they could see the white-caps on the water below. John looked down the line of undulating white chalk faces topped with green. The breeze blew Sherlock’s long hair back from his face. His eyes were closed, his face lifted toward the salt air. Please, God, let this work, thought John. 

“Why don’t you sit out here for a while. I’ll bring tea down.” 

Sherlock nodded. 

John unpacked the car. The cottage was spacious. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, large kitchen, sitting room. The floors were beautiful, weathered wood, except for the worn brick floor in the kitchen. He dumped Sherlock’s gear in the larger of the two bedrooms. He opened one of the Fortnum’s hampers and smiled. Mycroft was such a traditionalist. It was, of course, the original wicker and leather style with the huge black F&M on the side. He reached in and extracted a tin of Darjeeling, a tin of cane sugar, a large Stilton, a loaf of sourdough bread, and chocolate biscuits. That was enough to be going on with. Then he took out a bottle of champagne and a bottle of…he checked the label…Pittnauer St. Laurent, whatever that was, and put them in the fridge to chill. Someone had, of course, stocked the fridge. He took out the milk and started looking for the kettle. 

Not too long after, he set a large tray down on the wooden table on their terrace. They ate in companionable silence. 

“Cigarettes, John,” Sherlock said. “I need tobacco and papers. I got used to making my own in Afghanistan.” 

He wasn’t looking at John, still focused on the chalk cliffs. It was the first time Sherlock had said the word “Afghanistan,” had said anything remotely connected to what had happened. Cigarettes were a small price to pay, and one he would worry about later. 

“I’ll go into Turrow,” he said, naming the tiny village closest to the cottage. “But it’s small. I may have to go to East Dean. Anything else you need?” 

He shook his head. “John…” Then nothing. John waited. 

“Yes?” 

“Thank you.” 

“I’ll be disapproving about your smoking later. Just so you know.” 

Sherlock smiled. He smiled. John felt his heart beat a bit faster. 

“Not just for that. For everything.” 

“Yeah,” said John, and turned away before his friend saw the tears in his eyes. 

~~~~~

As the slow weeks turned the year from autumn to the beginnings of winter, their days fell into a pattern. Sherlock had nightmares, so he often slept late. After he had tried to go into Sherlock’s bedroom when he heard him cry out, he quickly realized that Sherlock always kept his bedroom door locked. He made it clear that he didn’t want to discuss the nightmares. They read. Sherlock smoked, but, in an unspoken trade-off, he also made the effort to eat. John never saw the violin case after the day they moved in. John sometimes woke in the night, hoping to hear music, but he never did. As Sherlock become stronger, they walked the Downs. As Mycroft predicted, Sherlock became fascinated by the bees. He sent John to the library in East Dean for more books on apiculture. He found hoods and masks and other gear in a shed in the back of the cottage. The hives, twelve of them, ran up the long, green meadow sloping behind the house. John occasionally visited the White Swan in Turrow or the George in East Dean for a pint, especially when Sherlock was being unusually taciturn. When asked if he wanted to go along, Sherlock always shook his head and went back to his book or his computer or the note-book on the bees. 

Every evening when it wasn’t actively raining, they took wine or whiskey down to the terrace and looked at the stars. Sherlock taught him to recognize constellations he had never heard of. Ironic, that, since once he had dismissed the fact that the earth went around the sun as useless trivia. The stars were spectacular. John had never seen so many, not just discreet fiery dots, but a blanket of light from horizon to horizon. 

They talked, but only on safe topics. The stars, the bees, history, old cases, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson. Mycroft visited occasionally. John didn’t even ask him about the hunt for Sherlock’s captors. That had begun to feel like another time and place, except for the reminder of Sherlock’s nightmares that often woke him. He heard cries, mumbled words that he could not quite make out. Sometimes he would put his hand on the wall that separated their bedrooms. But, in the face of the firmly locked door, he couldn’t think what to do. 

They were out on the terrace one night during early December, bundled in their coats, drinking Connemara single malt. 

“We’re not going to be able to keep this up much longer. It’s bloody cold out here, Sherlock.” 

“I know.” Sherlock took a long drink of the whiskey. 

"Why the stars? You never explained.” 

Sherlock looked up. “I planned to surprise you once. You seemed to think the solar system and such were important. So I started learning about it.” 

“You did?” John’s voice was shocked. “Because of that thing I said?” 

Shelock took the tobacco pouch and papers out of his coat pocket and rolled a cigarette with great concentration. Licked the paper, sealed it. Reached in another pocket for matches. The tiny flame illuminated his face briefly. 

“I had a plan. I was going to take you somewhere outside London, somewhere in the country. I thought we’d stay in a cottage, look at stars. I thought you might enjoy it.” 

John stared at him, trying to make out his expression by starlight and the red glow of the cigarette tip. He seemed to be serious. 

“Why didn’t you?” 

There was a long pause. “Moriarty. I left it too late.” 

“Oh.” 

“I remember, the night before….” Stop. Long pause. 

John waited. Waited. “Before?” he finally prompted. 

Sherlock sighed. He stubbed out his cigarette, and took another sip of the Connemara. They were sitting on the bench, only a couple of feet apart. Sherlock kept his eyes on the stars. “Before they came to the camp. I was sitting out in the desert, smoking, looking at the stars. I wanted to live so badly, to come back. To do this. To look at the stars with you.” 

John turned to look at him. Sherlock didn’t turn. He just kept looking at the stars. And he kept talking. About the camp, the family who had hidden him, about the prison, the beatings, the terrible things he had seen in the prison, about Jaan and the traffickers, about the men he had killed, about heat, and filth, and loneliness, and despair. About seeing little Mehtar and his mother on the ground, their throats cut, as they dragged him from the camp. John clenched his hands tightly together, pressed his lips together to keep from saying anything that would stop the low voice and its recitation. 

“I was in a death cell in Pakistan. Those were for the people they were planning on executing. The good thing, though, was that I had it to myself. And there was a window. I could see the stars.” 

Finally the pale face turned to him. Now he could see the tracks of tears, silvery in the light of the stars. John slowly leaned over and took the face in his hands. Slowly and deliberately, he kissed his best friend, tasting whiskey and tobacco as his tongue tentatively probed. Asked. With a shudder, Sherlock opened his mouth. Answered. Suddenly, his hands went behind John’s head, pulling him closer, deepening the kiss. 

Then he pulled back. “No. Not this way. Don’t feel sorry for me John. I couldn’t bear it.” 

John laughed. The joyful sound seemed to infuriate Sherlock. “Are you insane?” John asked. 

“Well, Mycroft seems to be worried that I may be.” 

John laughed again. “No. No. Not that. I mean are you crazy enough to think I haven’t wanted to do that for years? Bloody _years_.” 

“You have?” Sherlock looked intrigued. “Well, do it again then.” John did. 

~~~~~  


The next morning, John woke to Sherlock kissing the stellate scar on his shoulder. He wound his fingers into Sherlock’s hair, guided him onto his back, and drew back the sheet he was tangled in. 

“I didn’t get a good look last night,” he said. 

There was a pause. Sherlock didn’t try to cover himself, but he said, “A bit difficult to look at now, I’m afraid.” John knelt beside him and looked at the scars. Long puckered ridges snaked over the white chest. Marks from a beating. Burn scars on the stomach. The long, straight scar from the lung surgery. He leaned over and kissed the still-red stars. The three exit wounds. Shoulder, chest, thigh. 

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” said John. 

“In spite of all this?” Sherlock was trying to sound casual, but something dark coiled in the tone. 

“ _Because_ of all this,” John said fiercely. “In _spite_ of all this, you came back. To me.” John’s heart beat faster, thinking about the truth of what he had just said. 

Sherlock reached out and touched the star on John’s shoulder. Then, softly, he said, "Attired with stars, we shall for ever sit, triumphing over death, and chance, and thee O time.” 

“What was that?” 

“Milton,” replied his lover. “A poem. ‘On Time.’” 

Milton. Always the unexpected with Sherlock. “Have I ever told you that you are amazing?” 

“Maybe once or twice.” Sherlock smiled and drew him down. 

They slept together every night after that. Sometimes they just slept. Often they did not. Sherlock still had the nightmares, but gradually less and less often. When he cried out, John was there. 

~~~~~  


Mycroft came for a visit a few days before Christmas. He entered the cottage, his eyes flicked from Sherlock to John, then to the desk, then to the bedroom doors. He smiled. 

“I see that congratulations are in order,” he said. 

Sherlock didn’t bother denying it. “How the hell did you know, Mycroft?” 

“You know my methods.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. John laughed. 

“I’m happy to see that my instincts proved correct,” Mycroft continued. He reached into an inside pocket of his overcoat and drew out a thick envelope. 

“Merry Christmas.” He held the envelope out to John. John opened it and took out some folded papers. 

“My God, Mycroft.” John passed the sheaf of papers to Sherlock. 

“I put the deed in both your names. I thought you’d want to keep the place. A retreat of sorts.” 

“I…,” Sherlock cleared his throat. “I don’t know what to say, Mycroft. Except thank you. For this. For everything.” 

Mycroft smiled. “My pleasure entirely,” he said. He turned to John and held out his hand. “Welcome to the family, John.” John took it, still dazed. 

“And speaking of family,” said Mycroft, “Mummy wants you both to come for Christmas. She and Daddy want to get to know John.” 

Sherlock groaned. “We don’t do Christmas,” he said. 

“We do now,” said Mycroft. “You’re back from the dead, and we’re all going to celebrate. Speaking of resurrection, we should do Easter here. It will be lovely in the spring, and there’s a medieval church in Turrow that’s quite historic. I’ll bring Mummy and Daddy down, and we’ll stay at the George.” 

Sherlock glared at Mycroft and started to protest. Then he realized he was… happy. “Oh, very well. Here for Easter, and we’ll see you in Hampshire for Christmas. God help us all.” 

He already has, John thought. All he said was, “Staying for dinner, Mycroft? Our neighbor gave us a brace of local black grouse.” 

“Certainly. I brought wine, but I left it in the car.” He turned as he was going out the door. “Are there truffles left over from the last Fortnum box? There’s a sauce with truffles and cognac I could do.” 

"I’m going to work on the hives,” Sherlock said. “Call me when dinner’s ready.”


End file.
